Culms loosely tufted from a knotty base with scaly buds, erect, 50–100 cm tall, 1–2 mm in diam., usually unbranched, internodes often purple. Leaf sheaths longer or slightly shorter than internodes, usually glabrous, rarely sparsely pilose with tubercle-based hairs, older lower sheaths with disarticulated blades; leaf blades linear, flat, stiffly divaricate to patent, 6–15 × 0.4–0.9 cm, scabrid on both surfaces, sharply acuminate; ligule ca. 0.5 mm. Panicle open, exserted, (6–)10–15 cm; branches widely spreading, clothed in loosely imbricate spikelets, lower branches often with branchlets, lowest 3–8 cm. Spikelets 8–14 mm, green or purplish, florets (3–)5–10; glumes lanceolate, acuminate; lower glume 2–4.2 mm, 1–3-veined; upper glume 3.5–5.7 mm, (1–)3–7-veined; lemmas lanceolate, lowest 5.5–6.5 mm, usually with dark transverse blotches, thinly pilose along lower margins or subglabrous, emarginate; awn (0.6–)1–2(–3) mm; palea keels scabrid. Fl. and fr. Jul–Nov.
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